MATHIAS RAT – FROM MATTER TO STEAM

FROM MATTER TO STEAM.
A GLIMPSE AT THE (IM)MATERIAL WORLD OF MATHIAS RAT

Looking at Mathias Rat ’s digital artworks you might think they have something to do with time-travel. While gazing at them you may feel like you are getting the chance to witness a catastrophe at the very moment in which the victims bodies are obliterated. Evanescent, fluid, sometimes mutilated, yet harmonic, this is the appearance of Mathias’ (mostly feminine) subjects.

Mathias Rat is a self-taught artist, living in a small town on the enchanting island of Sardinia, Italy. His major inspirations are drawn from surrealistic photography and paintings, together with the imagery of cult horror movies and extreme metal music, like Kittelsen’s artworks for Burzum album cover for instance. His main references in visual arts are Beksinsky, Magritte, Hopper and David Lynch.

Mathias Rat ’s visionary work creeps up on you like a ghoul on its tiptoes, knocking at the doors of consciousness. It is, perhaps, a subtle nightmare but it has the power to shake and shock your senses – all the while, just about keeping you in your comfort zone.

The primary subjects of his images are unspotted, pure visages and naked bodies of ladies. His imagination takes place in a desolate, dark land where all hope is abandoned.

“The space is a lost, empty place where colors and textures of images dance and surround the room, sick dirty shadows disturbing, corrupting and erasing the surfaces perceptible to the senses enthralled in changing vortex”

There is neither fear nor sadness in his subjects’ expressions, rather a quiet, inner peace. This makes one wonder whether they might have a clue as to what’s happening to them, or what are they actually made of.

Ethereal creatures, broken dolls, mostly androgynous, sometimes curvy, they all share the same destiny. A perfectly obscure symphony of faces, arms, heads turning into steam erasing parts of them like a magick rubber, leaving ectoplasms floating in the air. A place made of the same matter of dreams, an eerie omen that leaves no possibility of escaping whatsoever.

“I like thinking that my works represent an escape to the exterior world, a connection to other dimensions through the derangement of the concept/canons of beauty”

The figures stand in a pitch black background, rarely physical, medievalesque scenography appears to be the only backdropm thereby compelling the viewer to focus on the central subject – a dancer in the dark, frozen in unnatural poses.
Uncomfortable beings, thrown in a desperate, liquified scenario.

“The boundaries are totally removed: reality becomes an infinite space ruled by ruins and dream dust. This is the birth of images, made of sounds and silence; a vital breath where there are no limits between reality and un-reality”

The series of images seem to follow a sort of evolution – we don’t know if its intentional or not – where each figure undergoes a crescent dissolution. The direction taken by the artist is eventually one of a total transfiguration, until no human is left and women turn to monsters made of steam.

Mathias Rat collaborates with many photographers, including Norwegian Daria Endresen. Currently, he is working on his own shoots and directing his interest toward other visual arts such as independent film.